Mother's Day 2013

 May 12, 2013
Mother's Day
Westburg Trail

For mother's day, we took a hike on the dry side of the Cascades, in the desert out from Ellensburg.  In a wildlife preserve, it's a four-mile out and back trail up a canyon to the ridge line. It's 1800 feet gain, and there was a fair amount of complaining in the first mile, but then the kids settled down.  It was pretty much up the whole way, with a couple pretty steep stretches.  Silas is just awesome  - not even 4 years old and made it the whole way.


  It was supposed to rain in Seattle, but hasn't, but we did get rain for about 30 miles around the pass. No rain where we were hiking, but pleasently overcast so we're less sunburned and it wasn't too hot.  Just a perfect day for hiking.


The wildflowers were amazing.  The first photo is from near a cairn at the top the ridge.  There were tons of wildflowers.

The second is walking on the ridge, with great views of the Yakima Valley.


The third photo is of a caterpillar nest.  We saw quite a few of the these caterpillars attacking the poor blooming shrubs.  Not sure what they are, but they sure were cool to look at.


 I need to learn the names of the desert wildflowers.  There were flowers of every color, and from the ridge you could see some sides of the canyon that looked like they were snowed on because of the complete coverage of the white flowers.  At one point, we could see white, 2 shades of yellow, orange, red, pink and purple flowers.

Winter Break 2012 X Country Skiing in the Methow

 Skiing in the Methow
Christmas 2012

With my family, my sister's family and my Mom.  Thanks to Mom, Noell, Gary, Elliott, Winnie, and Hugh for making this such a great trip.


The first photo is one afternoon Noell, Mike and I went skiing, and the sun briefly came out!  The conditions and weather were wonderful all week.


Silas and his cousin Hugh had lots of fun in the snow.
































My mom enjoyed snow shoeing.  We broke trail (with Mike) one afternoon around the lake outside our cabin.  Really beautiful.










We also did some sledding and general goofing off.

Turkey Trot 2012

 Seattle Turkey Trot 2012
This is our third Thanksgiving participating in this 5 K race to benefit the Ballard Food Bank.  The first year we volunteered, and got to give the folks registering hand stamps in the snow.  Last year we ran.  Maeve ran/walked. Silas was in the stroller a bit but mostly carried by Mike.  We finished 2011 in about an hour.

This year Maeve and I ran/walked it in 49 minutes.  I expect she ran or skipped all but about 3/4 of a mile. Silas and Mike were the sweep - Silas was the very last participant to cross the finish line at about 1:32.  Mike carried him less than 1/2 mile, so he walked most of it.  Pretty good for a 3 year old!


Photo 1 is before the race.  Silas wanted to run as a lion- his Halloween costume from last year.

Photo 2 is from when Maeve and I walked back to finish the in-park part of the race with Silas.  We're approaching the finish line, so Mike had a great view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, which were actually visable.

It's a great course for kids - all downhill and ends at Golden Gardens Park.

Photo 3 is us drinking up the after-race refreshments, mango flavored coconut water, on our way to the cool playground at Golden Gardens.

Silas on the Tagalong

October 12, 2012

Silas is now big enough to ride on the Tagalong.  He's been practicing riding around the block and Wallingford for the past week.  He has to stretch a wee bit on the downstroke and I was a bit nervous about him riding on the big roads to school, but he did it yesterday the first time and he's fine.  Mike is avoiding the big downhill on 45th down to the freeway in front of Dick's Drivein for the moment.  Silas is so happy to be on the Taglong just like a big boy.

He's also now a maniac on his balance bike and we've taken off the training wheels on his regular bike, but he's not able to 2-wheel independently yet.

Mountain Loop Highway Camping

September 14-16, 2012
We went camping at the foot of Mt Pilchuck (Verlot campground - wouldn't camp there again) to get an early morning start up Mt. Pilchuck.  It was awesome!  Lovely September weather, in the 70's and sunny.  We started off a little cranky, and Silas walked the first hour up, but once he was in the pack we seemed to settle down and the kids were happier.  It's a 5.5 mile hike and over 2200 ft elevation gain, so was a big up for Maeve who was tired by the scree fields at the end.  We did a walk 11 minutes, rest 2 minutes rhythm for about the last 40 minutes.  The views were amazing, and we kept hoping the haze would burn off, but it turns out it was from the fires in Eastern Washinton.  The views were still great, although we couldn't see Seattle or Mt. Ranier.  The last few feet to the top was a scramble over boulders, Maeve's first, and she did great.  It's not very exposed, which helped.  There were a ton of people on the trail, and as the photo of Maeve coming down the ladder from the lookout shows, there was a bit of a wait to go up or come down.  Silas really wanted to do the scramble, and got to "scramble" all but about 45 minutes of the way down. Just a lovely hike.




The last two photos are of a walk a little farther out the mountain loop highway to the Big Four ice caves.   After deciding the day before that Silas was too big for the backpack, we did a 2.25 mile, 200 ft gain hike to see the ice caves.  Big 4 mountain was neat, not sure why it's 4 instead of 5, but there's probably some history there.  The trail was super-well maintained with lots of boardwalks and bridges, which the kids liked, and the caves were cool, really really cool, so much so that Silas and I went back up to the trail for a while to eat a snack and warm up.  You can't actually go in the caves because they're dangerous, but we walked all around the outside. The air temperature changed a lot depending on whether or not you were getting the air coming out the caves.

Camping was much better - no problems with the 4 of us in one tent, everybody slept, and the kids are now big enough to safely explore the camp ground, like the woods around our site or walking to the bathrooms on their own.  Yay!

Denny Creek Waterslide Hike

September 9, 2012
We did a short hike up to the Denny Creek Waterslide.  We decided it was time to start doing some shorter hikes without Silas in the pack. It was a lovely walk up, with very little water at the waterslide.  The day was too cool to get in the water, anyway, but we were able to walk upstream a few yards to the waterfall and eat a snack there.

Desert Hiking

 Desert Hiking
July 1, 2012

We went for our first desert hike.  We were in scrubby valleys (Robinson Canyon/Ainsley Canon) in L.T. Murray Wildlife area, less than 10 miles off I-90 at exit 101.  It's just a 2 hour drive from Seattle.  July 1 our summer hadn't hit yet and we went through rain and 50 degree weather on the way out.  Past Snoqualmie Pass, the sky started clearing up, and ended up being a lovely day to the east of the Cascades, dry and about 10 degrees warmer than in Seattle.  We walked up a couple valleys filled with grasses and scrub.  I didn't get a good picture of it, but one side of each valley was wooded and the other was just grass or bare.  These are valleys that elk and deer overwinter in and we saw parts of 2 elk skeletons as well as several spent shot-gun shells.  However, we had the trail to ourselves - we saw one mountain biker on the trail and there was a couple camped at the trailhead with two horses who were riding, but we only saw them at the trailhead and got to pet the horses.  Lovely.  Now that the kids can stay happy over 90 minutes in the car, we'll start doing a lot more of these in Spring and Fall.

Maeve's 6th Birthday

Maeve turned 6 today.  We opened presents at home and then had a party at Meridian Park, across the street from our house.  Maeve asked for blueberry cake with cream cheese icing decorated with yellow stars, and we made a star pinata for entertainment.  It turned out to be a lovely day and we had over 36 kids kids there - Maeve's friends plus siblings.  I know because although 25 kids RSVPed, we had 36 Popsicles and at least 3 kids didn't get any because we ran out.